Great strides in medical reproductive science have been made over the last few decades. Indeed, it’s now possible to safely increase the odds of having either a boy or a girl, which is something that would have been unheard of just half a century ago. So, when choosing sex of baby, whether boy or girl, what should people who are contemplating such an option know about “gender selection,” as it’s called?
For starters, gender – or sex – selection attempts to predetermine the sex of a child prior to even trying to conceive. All of this work is done before the mother becomes pregnant, and there are a number of methods for doing so. Each of these methods has varying degrees of success, but odds in some cases can approach nearly 100 percent.
Currently, a number of non-clinical commercially-available sex selection kits are on the market which claims to use natural supplements to do the same thing as what’s accomplished in clinical medicine-type processes. These over-the-counter kits state that they deliver a success rate running upwards of 96 percent. They all say they help to make changes in the prospective parents’ body chemistries to make sex selection a certainty.
As far as actual medical procedures, there are several of them. One of the most popular is known as MicroSort. It seeks to separate male sperm according to differences in each of the sperm cells’ DNA, the differences of which are known to favor either a male or a female child.
Once the sperm has been categorized into those sperm cells which will lead to a male or a female, the next phase in the procedure uses either IUI (intrauterine insemination) or IVF (in vitro fertilization) to emplace fortified (or “enriched”) sperm cells into the female’s womb, for one. Or (in IVF), a ripe egg from the female is fertilized with the sperm and placed in the womb. There’s a 92 percent success factor for girls and a lower rate of 81 percent for boys.
The MicroSort success rate first presupposes a successful pregnancy, though the rate of pregnancy using IUI is at nearly 16 percent and IVF at 32 percent. These pregnancy rates are typical, and in line with just about any other method of insemination with the aim of successful pregnancy. So, once pregnancy has been brought about, the chances of having either a boy or a girl, by preference, is very good.
For people who want to have a gender-specific child, there have never been more choices as they pertain to procedures for doing so. And medical science has made the odds of sex selection success better than ever. Remember, though, to take some time to research these procedures and processes very carefully before deciding on any particular method of gender selection.